


Arabidopsis

by CypressSunn



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: Amos doesn’t have a solution and Prax does not expect one. There is no offer behind his eyes save for a quiet, waiting want.
Relationships: Amos Burton/Praxidike Meng
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66
Collections: 101 Prompts Meme, Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Arabidopsis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



> Written for the Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020 round. Prompt included from my personal writting meme; #31: Flower.
> 
> Minor warnings for casual recreational drug use, space piracy, and mentions the threat of human trafficking. Nothing out of the ordinary for show or book canon.

_**i.** _

If Prax hadn’t known better, he would have said the crew of the Rocinante were _looking_ for excuses to hire a contractor. Specifically, a contractor with an advanced doctorate in interstellar botany. The transmission they sent ahead to Ganymede offered a generous compensation for oversight on a ‘much needed’ air scrubber retrofit. But here and now, standing shoulder to shoulder between Amos and Captain Holden, Prax realizes it has all been an outright fabrication.

The foliage is healthy and strong. Nothing in the green hub or central water nutrient line requires renovating. And while the expanding botanical exploits of Amos Burton required a more robust mineral water supply, it was more or less busywork and adjusting for redundancies.

Prax isn’t sure who to level the accusation at, especially in the face of a decent wage and Mei’s utter delight in all things engineering. Noami did not seem bothered at all by her newest little student, the two of them chirping away over reactor readouts.

Alex, the last crewmember unaccounted for, swoops in with a smile. “Has Amos told you want he calls them yet?” The Martian is chuckling to himself, pointing at the plant boxes lining their worktable.

“The folium-consoles? What about them?”

“That’s not what we call them on this ship,” say Alex with all his brassy warmth. He pockets his hands in his jumpsuit and trots on, dragging the Captain with him. 

It doesn’t escape Prax’s notice that Jim has a knowing look of his own. Nor that Amos waits until their footfalls are out of earshot before he asks; “Who’s Folium?”

“Hm? Oh, its not a person. Its Latin.” On his hand terminal, Prax notes the seedlings numbering seven through twelve would make for hardier stock with more inorganic supplements. “Folium as in foliage. Though I used to joke that vinea-consoles would be a better name since you’re more likely to encounter vine growth then—”

Prax stops, feeling embarrassed in a way he cant explain. Amos is fixed upon him, hanging off his every word. Prax really should have better jokes to deserve it.

“ — actually,” he continues, bashfully, “I remember that joke about folium-consoles never really earned a laugh.”

Amos blinks, not understanding.

“Well, I like calling ‘em Prax Panels better.”

“Really?” Prax’s awkwardness does not relent. It only worsens, leaving him as flustered as he is moved. “Well… I, I’m honored. It is nice to know a little piece of me is still aboard the Roci, even if I’m not part of the crew anymore.”

“Who said you stopped being a part of this crew?”

Prax does not know what to say to that. “I only figured, since I went back to Ganymede—”

“You figured wrong,” Amos says simply. 

Prax doesn’t know what to say. So he falls back on is old laurels: plant talk. “I noticed your Prax Panels have a some modifications.”

Amos beams. “I welded a few stabling points in, here and here. There's not much we can do when he hit the high g’s but roots always come back this way. I had a few other ideas for them…”

“I’m impressed. Show me more.”

* * *

_**ii.** _

“There’s a reason most plant life is transported in seed form,” Prax reminds Jim and Amos as they wheel in a large sealed cargo crate. Another suspiciously timed consulting gig for the Rocinante crew's run of the mill contract work. Even heroes of the known universe needed to pay the bills between potentially world ending events. Jim had been sparse on the details, mentioning only delicate and valuable plantlife that needed to be ferried from point A to point B. Prax was excited to tak the work, thinking he could turn this into a lecture someday; ‘How to properly shuttle live vegetation in potentially-slash-most-likely hostile space zones.’ There has to be a new emerging fleet of botany students who would love to hear it.

Amos at last prys open a crate with a crowbar and familiar smell hits Prax before he sees it. It smells like his academy days.

“That is a very illegal cultivar of marijuana.”

Amos beams. Jim shrugs.

“We are willing to pay you quite handsomely for your discretion,” says the latter.

Prax thinks for a moment. “How about you let me dry a few buds that your client will never know went missing?”

Jim’s eyebrows reach his hairline. Amos’s grin somehow gets better before promising, “got a batch slow-curing as we speak.” Not long after, Prax is elevated in more than a few senses of the word. Hand’s free, feet free low g drifting. Smoking without care or weight is the most fun Prax has had in longer than he can remember. 

Though it is hard to remember much of anything right now. 

“You good, doc?” Amos asks, standing on what is either the floor or the ceiling.

“Very good,” Prax says, lax and free. “Nice and mellow. Almost feel weightless.” 

Prax chuckles at his own joke. Amos chuckles too, not because Prax is funny — Mei disabuses him of that notion on a constant basis— but for another reason Prax and his doctorate still cannot parse out. He knows Amos follows the cue of the people around him. Evident in the way Amos is always the last to laugh at a joke, always the last to interject in a discussion. He’s mindfully tracking what and how to think and interact in any given social aspect that doesn’t require life or death intervention. 

What mystifies Prax is how he seemingly joined the ranks of those under Amos’s careful consideration and acceptance. He had none of James Holden’s noble bravery. None of Alex Kamal’s sincerity or cheerful hospitality. He certainly did not possess an iota of Naomi Nagata’s unyielding resolve.

All Prax had done was try and fail and try a little more to find his daughter. Somehow, Amos still looks at him like that and Prax cannot stand it for long. He takes a drag deep enough it makes him cough. He thinks he should change the subject even though there’s no way for Amos to know what he is thinking.

“Maybe I missed my calling when I settled on specializing in edible Fabaceae…”

From where he stands above Prax, Amos tilts his head, questioning. “Legumes, I mean. Beans, peas, soy, the works. Though it was not for lack of trying. Originally I wanted to work in botany because I thought it would be a cannabis cash cow.”

“What happened to that plan?”

“Oversaturated market. Even if I could develop a high potency strain — and I very much could,” Prax insists with a touch of pride, “half my peers had the same idea.”

“Makes sense,” Amos says. His voice is louder, Prax realizes. He’s somehow drifted closer to him without meaning too. Fitting. “Not many belters outside of Ganymede know what a plant looks like if it ain’t stolen or illegal.”

“Very astute,” Prax agrees with a wag of his finger. Amos grins that grin again.

“But you still stuck it out. You still work with plants.”

“Oh, that was the fault of the thale cress. Clever little weed.”

“Never smoked anything called thale cress.”

“Not that kinda weed, Prax chuckles. “A weed in the traditional sense, unwanted self-propagating growth. Earthers say back in the old days thale cress grew in abundance near roads and railways. Anywhere mankind disturbed the soil, thale cress sprouted. The plant was so simple and commonplace, but still complex and useful that pre-space faring scientists used it to map plant genomes and in research laboratories. It became a model organism and the first plant ever grown in micrograv. So as per tradition, freshman botany courses each grow their own thale cress. Propagating it is a portion of your final grade.” Amos is still watching him intently. He has been silent for a long time. He takes in every word and lets Prax ramble on and over. “I think, I killed at least three of those plants before I got it right. I’d never had to try and _nurture_ anything before— keeping something alive is so much harder from the outset… wait, you're not smoking… Amos why are you not smoking? 

“Smoking in a closed atmosphere is risky, Doc.”

“Wait, but you said—”

“Yeah, but I told the Cap we didn’t need to wait until we docked. It’s was high time you had the full belter experience.”

Prax wants to laugh at that; high time…

“So I’m the one that has to keep an eye on you until then.”

“That’s no fun,” Prax insists.

“Speak for yourself.”

With grace that almost felt foregin to his body, Prax somersaults in the air. The soles of his boots connect with ceiling, or was that the floor, and kicking off he propels himself to Amos.

Amos whistles low. “So there’s a real belter in there after all.”

“Quiet, earther.” Holding Amos by the shoulders, Prax inhales deeply, holds the smoke in his chest, then breathes it into Amos’s mouth. Amos accepts without complaint. They drift together just like that, lips almost touching.

* * *

_**iii.** _

Within transmission range, Prax’s hand terminal chirps halfway through Ganymede's night cycle. A signal from a localized satellite downlink; an incoming feed reading BURTON, A. Prax thoughtlessly taps the screen to accept without thinking. He rolls over slightly in bed, terminal against the pillow casting out the image of Amos’s burdened face. He looks tired. The circles under his eyes alone indicate he needs sleep.

“You said I should comm you. Let you know how many g’s it takes for my Prax Panels to hit their tension point.”

“Did I?” Prax yawns. He distantly remembers his fascination with the recycled retrofits Amos had come up with. The durability of on-the-spot engineering was fascinating. “I suppose I did.”

Prax lays his head back and listens to Amos list off his discoveries. The Rocinante had been outrunning a larger fleet of ships in some interplanetary incident that neither of them wants to dwell on. The low husk of Amos’s voice keeps Prax feeling calm. There’s a few mechanical terms Prax doesn’t understand and it makes him smile. It serves him right that just this once, the magboot is on the other foot.

“You should apply for a patent,” he tells Amos, dreamily. “There would be a market for travel resilient plant beds like yours…”

Amos’s voice stops. Prax cracks an eye open. His face is unreadable.

“You messin’ with me, Doc?”

“Course not.” Prax stretches along the length of his bunk. He sighs. “Anyone can get one with the right corporation. I mean, _I_ have patents under my name… Well, a few shared with the researchers I ran with in my younger days.”

“Hm.”

“More and more belters are shipping off through the gate. They’re trying to bring as much as possible with them, plants included… You could make a decent amount of coin.”

The pair do not speak for the longest while. Prax is afraid the link has cut out. The strength of the signal still reads strong in the bottom corner. Amos is simply waiting for Prax to say what he means. Prax sits upright. He is more awake now. Painful truths have no place in dreams.

“The rebuilding efforts here on Ganymede aren’t amounting to much. The new worlds are too lucrative to stay tied down to a husk like this old moon. Half our work force has shipped out. The other half are making preparations to follow.”

Amos doesn’t have a solution and Prax does not expect one. There is no offer behind his eyes save for a quiet, waiting want. Prax knows it would only be fair if it were him who gave in. For Prax to be the one to tell Amos it is safe to verbalize this thing between them. Amos did so much of the heavy lifting already, keeping Prax alive in hope and body. Amos was the one who saved Mei, who killed Strickland, who brought them home again. Sometimes Prax feels so lost all that consoles him is the hope that Amos could do it all again.

Because the same home they fought so hard to return to is petering out. The future is dimming and Prax needs a plan. For Mei’s sake if not his own. He needs Amos. He needs Amos to tell him he should go. Go where Prax knows Amos can’t follow close enough to remain within comm-range.

“Me and Mei haven’t made any decisions yet. We won’t for a while… not until the next time you swing by Jupiter’s lunar space.”

Amos blinks and nods and lets the topic slide. Prax sees a minute tick in Amos’s jaw, a slight unclenching that has grown familiar to his eye. He feels restfulness overtaking his body again knowing Amos feels some slight relief, content for now to have the, still within reach. The spend the rest of the night cycle together. They don’t speak much, but at least they know they other is there. If nothing else, they know.

* * *

_**vi.** _

The evacuation alarm sounds. Ganymede’s defenses have been breached as the pirates descend on the station. A fleet of unmarked ships surround the agro-domes, weapons locked and primed. They are taking the entire moon, from plants to people to scrap metal down to the bolts. No one is coming to rescue them. There is no one left who cares enough or with numbers strong enough to make an impact. Prax has seen a half dozen souls dragged through the corridors by their hair or the scruff of their jumpsuits. He knows what fate awaits them. A lifetime of bondage, forced to mine for precious rare metals and sold at the whims of their captors into worse and worse conditions.

Chances for an escape are slim.

A little less slim now that Prax has a gun. It feels strange in his grip, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It was not something he carried often. The piece from the Rocinante’s weapons gallery was normally left sealed in his office desk. Only luck, Prax thinks to himself. Just luck that the sirens reached him at his research desk. 

Prax left his first would-be captor with a gushing red hole in his stomach. Even if his cohorts found him in time, none of these fervent terror inspiring trespassers would have the know how to save him. Prax knows he is leaving the man to certain death, bleeding out over the grated walkway.

Prax does not look back.

Through the chaos and unrest Prax manages to slip through the walkways of the station without drawing attention to himself. It is not a long way to Mei’s school, but it is slow going to keep himself covered.

The school hasn’t been overtaken. But Prax’s keycode doesn’t work when he tries to enter. Dashing from a nearby door is a familiar face. Twisted with fear and peril, one of Mei’s instructors tries to duck down a corridor. Spying Prax watching them, their footing slips and they hit the deck.

“Please! Please let me go— wait, Doctor Meng, is—”

“Where is Mei?”

“She— she’s already gone.”

“What?” An icy chill sinks down Prax’s spine. He takes one advancing step, gun raised. Not. Again. “Where is she? Who took her?”

“Doctor, there’s no need for— I stayed! I stayed when all the other adults rams. They just left the children but I stayed until the last child was picked up! I didn’t leave them!” the teacher sputters, near hyperventilating. “Now, now, now I have to find my own family, please! We need to leave!”

The Klaxon alarm is still blaring behind them, flashing red and white and red and white. Prax can’t move. He can’t lower his gun. He can’t let this happen again. He’s ready to kill something. Ready to throw himself out an airlock when he is finished.

“Where is my daughter? I am the only one who would have come to get her.”

“Mei was one of the first to go! She was picked up by a man!”

“What man?” Prax makes a show of turning the safety on and then back off again.

“He, he had a keypass! He was on her approved pick-up list. He had permission, Doctor Meng, I swear! It was a big bald man, as big as an Earther. Mei knew him, and she ran right to him when he came for her. He scooped her up and she called him uncle—”

“Uncle Amos.” Prax took his finger off the trigger. Mei was with Amos. Mei was safe. Prax felt his vision go hazy around with edges with relief and felt an awareness of just how long they had been standing there, out in the open. With a deftness that would have made Amos proud, Prax drags the schoolteacher by the collar into a back walkway.

“Where are you meeting your family?”

“The Galileo docks. That’s where they comm’d me last—”

“Alright, I’m going to get you there.”

The man doesn’t know what to make of that. Prax doesn’t blame him. He almost killed him not a comment ago. “Are you, are you sure?”

“Yes. You saved a lot of children when you refused to abandon them. Let’s go.”

Trekking down to the counterspin dockside is more dangerous. The slavers know choking off evacuation points is an easy way to capture the desperate and hopeless. Prax has to fire off his gun twice more and teach the schoolteacher how to take cover. They find others, hiding and cowering for their lives in the nooks and crannies of what is left of Ganymede. A shopkeeper and a few elderly cleaners. A lost little boy and a gaggle of teenage girls being led by a wounded security guard. The guard is limping. He leans heavy against one of the older girls but is ready to raise his own weapon. Huddled together, with Prax at the front, the school teacher carrying the boy, the guard covering the rear, the unlikely pack push forward. They move silent and watchful as ghosts down the dark thoroughfares of Ganymede’s last dying breaths.

Three men corner them just as they reach the travel pavilion. They raise their guns and promise shackles instead of death if they come quietly.

Prax fires first.

In a display of belter courage that Prax can only dream off, the teenagers charge forward and overwhelm the stupefied pirates. They manage to shoot and hit nothing before being tackled to the ground. After, Prax would marvel at their daring and hope Mei could grow up to be just like them.

When pirate reinforcements arrive, their second wave assault does not last long. In violent but definite explosions, they are each shot down in the back before they can take a single life.

Amos stands at the threshold of a back corridor, weapon lowering.

“About time, Doc.”

*

The last relief worthy vessels depart across the Rociante’s radar as Ganymede burns behind them. Prax turns on Amos, red-faced and exhausted.

“Tell me where she is.”

“Mei’s with Alex and the others, strapped in at flight control. She’s big enough now that if we gotta, she’ll fit the high g juice injectors, but we’ll avoid it if—”

Amos stops. He looks at Prax, the way only he does, long and hard. A rare emotion crosses his face. “You thought she was gone.”

Prax says nothing. Instead, he turns to the nearest screen and taps in his old access code to view the security feeds. It hasn’t changed. He pulls up the main deck camera.

Amos steps closer. “You thought someone took her,” he continues as they watch Mei tucked away next to Jim, who. He appears to be calmly explaining something to her with gentle gestures of his hand. Mei will most likely have a dozen questions about the concept of human rights by the time they are done.

“Yeah, I did…” Prax admits. He pulls his eyes away from the pixelated little Mei and presses his head against the cold metal hull of the ship. It’s soothing in its indifference. “I got all the way down to her school and there was no one there and I… I was ready to just hand myself over to the pirates. I thought I let her down again.”

“I made you think someone took her.” Prax can almost hear Amos swallow harshly. “I made you think they got her.”

“I wasn’t scared for her at all once I knew you had her. You saved her. Again. That is all that mattered.”

Amos does not seem willing to let himself off the hook. “I’m sorry, Doc.”

“It’s more than fine.” Prax has to lean with his back against the wall now. He is so tired. Absolutely drained. Everyone Prax had encountered had lived and everyone he cared about was safe, but the weight of that initial fear still had not left him. Prax did not want to admit it, but it did not matter.

Amos could tell. Whatever doubt or misgiving Amos felt in his understanding of other human beings, with Prax he is never far from the truth.

“No, it’s not alright. I comm’d you but I knew the feeds were being scrambled. I should have known you would be scared. I should have gone to get you first—”

“No,” Prax bites back. He had enough strength to argue that. Mei came first in everything. “You did everything right, Amos.”

Amos’s mouth is tight, his look wild-eyed. If Prax did not know better, he would think that the Earther was frightened of him. Frightened to his core of something, at least.

“Do you need to hit me?”

“I’m not going to hit you, Amos.” The offer doesn’t surprise Prax. It does disappoint him that he can’t figure a way to ease Amos from this ledge of self flagellation. 

“You should, Doc. You should hit me.” His voice crackles with quiet anger, low and threatening in a way that makes Prax feel irrational safe. “I’d do _worse_ to anyone else who made you this scared.”

“I know you would.” If Prax had a modicum of adrenaline left, he would kiss Amos. For now, it would have to wait. He presses his head to Amos’s shoulder and lets the gratitude take hold of him. Gratitude in being alive. In knowing that his friends would always come back for him, that the only reason the Roci was not chasing down the pirate vessels was avoiding the risk of a firefight with his daughter aboard. He nestles in closer to Amos. “Just give me a minute, okay? I just need you to stay with me a little longer before we see Mei.”

He doesn’t want his daughter to see him so ragged and anxious. She needs him stable and certain and calm, and Prax needs Amos to regain all of those things. He feels Amos’s hands wrap around his waist. He smells like sweat and engine oil and whispers promises in his ear; “— ain’t going anywhere, Doc. Not this time.”

* * *

_**v.** _

The Mengs live aboard the Rocinante for nearly a year before Prax gets Amos to listen about patenting his designs. Amos is uncharacteristically reserved about sharing his blueprints. It does not make sense to him that he can own an idea, or that his improvements would be worth any money. He won’t let the marketers change the name from Prax Panels and largely doesn’t understand half the corporate business talk, but neither does Prax. For all that, Holden helps them hire the lawyer who blocked the Martian government from reclaiming the Roci after Io. 

The Prax Panels sell better than they imagined. First turning a pretty penny into a steady stream of cash. It’s enough for Amos to suggest sending Mei to a secure boarding school on Luna. “With a little pull from Chrissy, Mei could do anything she wanted. On Earth or Mars or in the colonies. She’s still young enough to get used to the gravity.”

Prax hates the idea. 

Except the Rociante isn’t a family-friendly vessel, no matter what Alex keeps insisting. If Mei stays aboard any longer she’s likely to choose a life of space-faring over college. Prax doesn’t mind if she wants to live among the stars, but he wants to have every possible foundation in life first.

It’s a hard decision but for once Prax willingly lets his daughter go.

*

After, Prax just never leaves. He never gives Naomi coordinates of a port to leave him. He never tells Alex he doesn’t need to keep planning meals for five. He doesn’t object when Jim mounts a placard reading, Praxideke Meng, M.D. next to the rest on the crew list. Most importantly, he never moves out of Amos’s quarters.

It is a different kind of life aboard the Roci. Fewer plants, no glare from the sun mirrors, and more people shooting at him than ever. But Prax isn’t so old he can’t learn the tricks of a new trade. He learns he has an eye for appraisal in what’s worth salvaging and what isn’t. When he picks out the free-floating green hub registered as decommissioned, he knows the Roci is onto something.

“Sorry, Prax. I know you’re excited about the prospect of more plants, but there’s no way that place hasn’t been picked clean,” Alex says over the commlink. “It was barely off its registered trackway. Someone probably spotted it long before us.”

“Still worth a look,” says Jim. He’s quick to back Prax up these days. 

“We’ll see about that. Maybe the good doctor would like to place a wager? Oh don’t make that face at me, Naomi. The boys are millionaires. They can’t donate _all_ the money to medical research—”

Amos lowers the volume on the comm-link. He turns to Prax before they breach the opposite ship’s hull. “You ready, Doc?”

He nods.

The mechanic makes quick work of prying open the opposite doors. They slide open under their own power and Amos and Prax see that the shuttle has not lost electrical lighting. With few cautious steps in their vacsuits, they find a security monitor. 

“The place still has plenty of atmosphere,” Amos comms. “No spin-grav, but we got no leaks and no damage to the flora onboard. We’re gonna need to store it in the cargo bay.”

“I’ll be damned,” swears Alex, watching the feed. “I’m sure glad you didn’t take the bet.”

“Jim and I will suit up to help you move the cargo, boys. Sit tight, we’ll be there soon.”

Prax knows the routine by now. It was a cut and dry salvage claim. The ship had been adrift long enough that the foliage was growing wild and thick in its paneling. With cycling water and no human interference, it would need some pruning to transport. They would take the fuel and anything else worth any scrip and leave a radar tag on their way out.

“Alex was right, in a way,” Prax mentions to Amos, watching his crack open his toolbox. “The likelihood of a ship like this being abandoned, going adrift for so long, its defies logic.”

Amos shakes his head. “We don’t know what happened here. But so long as it ain’t the protomolecule, it ain’t our job to find out.”

Prax gives Amos a worrying look.

“It’s not the protomolecule,” he insists. Prax feels a little more at ease. At least until Amos follows it up with, “it was probably just pirates. If we go deeper into the ship they probably took all they could carry and sold off the scientists.”

Prax rubs his temples. Amos was probably right, but it’s a grim reality to dwell on. All around him the life support systems are still thrumming. Surely a team of engineers and botanists did good work here while they could. It wasn’t enough to save them.

“Part of me keeps thinking how quickly it all changes,” Prax muses. “How you get vanished into the void, no explanations. One minute you’re doing your job, and the next you’re caught up in the insignificance.” Prax rakes his hands through the green stems between the steel wall beams. More than likely, these plants had outlived their caretakers.

“This could have just as easily been me.”

Amos turns to him. The multi-wrench in his hand that he is finished with clatters into his open toolbox a little too loudly. With a slow raised eyebrow, the offense he takes is clear.

In recompense, Prax hangs back, tapping his helmet against Amos’s. A belter sign of affection, synonymous to the kiss he wants to place at the corner of Amos’s mouth. “But, of course I know you would never let that happen.”

Amos nods, looking content, and hands Prax his favorite spanner. Jim and Naomi are chattering on comm link, their footsteps drawing near. It’s time to get back to work.

_**fin.** _


End file.
